Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Gut-Churning Good Time

The Royal Art of Poison: Filthy Palaces, Fatal Cosmetics, Deadly Medicine, and Murder Most Foul by Eleanor Herman

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What a ride! Big thanks to badkittyuno for putting this gem on my radar. Or, in the parlance of this book, allowing me to seek of the poisons of this tome via unicorn horn. We, as humans, have done some pretty vile things to ourselves and others since…pretty much the dawn of time. The Royal Art of Poison illustrates-in graphic detail- the poisonous things that people (mostly royalty, but the common man is capable of critical nastiness as well) have been doing intentionally and accidentally to […]

I bet that golden ticket makes the chocolate taste terrible

Switched On by John Elder Robison

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The elevator pitch for this book is “Awakenings for Autism,” but it’s obviously more than that. John Robison is pretty up front about – well, everything because of that aforementioned Autism, but more importantly – becoming the voice of high functioning Autism (previously Asperger’s) by virtue of having written a memoir and without any scientific background in neuroscience. Which isn’t entirely fair, because Look Me In the Eye is an exceptionally well crafted memoir that gives the reader a sense of how Robison thinks, not […]

The human body is a disgusting miracle

Navel Gazing by Michael Ian Black

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It’s so refreshing to read a man’s take on body insecurity, because man does it feel like society acts as though it’s an exclusively female problem. Obviously the expectations for women are higher and beauty standards are unfairly applied to women more than men, but the idea that body image issues are strictly female is often twisted into describing them as vain. So, Michael Ian Black’s insecurities about his feet and his waistline are welcome, particularly as they are written in his typically humorous tone, […]

Your Gut is a Wonderland

Gut: The Inside Story of Our Most Underated Organ by Giulia Enders

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Gut  was originally published in  Germany  and then translated a few  years   later.  It does lose a little in translation (the humor works better in German). Overall this is a good introduction to what’s going on from the spoon all the way to the bowl, so to speak. At the time Ender’s wrote this book she was a medical student. As a teenager she’d had health issues that were difficult to diagnose, which spurred her interest in the gut. Since this book was published there […]

“All that surrounds us comes from death, every part of every city, and every part of every person.”

From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty

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This was interesting, although I enjoyed her follow up (Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death) a bit more. In From Here to Eternity, Doughty travels to different areas of the United States and then the world to see how different cultures mourn their dead. There’s a wide variety of locales — a funeral pyre in Colorado, a sky burial in Nepal, a massive collection of urns in Japan. Throughout her travels, she discusses how very messed up the […]

Parts of Gulp are hard to swallow

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach

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I love Mary Roach’s books. They’re funny and irreverent and very educational. Her use of ridiculous footnotes rivals that of Gaiman’s and Pratchett’s Good Omens. So I had really high hopes for Gulp when I first picked it up a few years ago.  Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal is about the human digestive tract, from the mouth all the way down to the exit. It discusses how smell affects taste, the roles of saliva, why poop smells and attempts to make it not smell, […]



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